Sermons and SodaWater
by FairMostFatal
Summary: Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter/Sermons and soda-water the day after." -- Lord Byron, Don Juan. Hangovers, literal and metaphorical. And the real reason Petrarch never married Laura.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"_Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise;_

_Brisk confidence still best with women copes;_

_Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes"_

_Lord Byron—Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II_

****

She dared him to do it.

_I would never marry you, Chuck. I'd be insane to even think of it. Suicidal. Homicidal! I'd kill you before the ink dried on the fucking license._

She meant the words, he knew that. Just like he knew she meant it when she packed up her Louis luggage in a sloppy-ponytailed frenzy and stormed out of the Palace suite for the last time, chucking a broken Laboutin at his head for good measure. The shoe left a scuffmark on the wall that was the exact shape of Winston Churchill's head. It stared him down every morning over breakfast with serious, gimlet-eyed intent, stalwart and resolute.

She meant every word she said.

But she dared him to prove her wrong.

*

Chuck hadn't seen Blair in two months. Hadn't spoken to her in four. Hadn't had her undressed and in his bed in nine.

When she finally returned to the Palace—her mouth a sad crescent, the varnished oak bar in front of her a burial ground marked by the glassy tombstones of dirty martinis—he felt like she'd been there all along, a phantom on a barstool waiting to take form. He walked across the lobby to her side. His fingers found her bare arm, stroked the unbearably soft skin from her elbow to the wisp of lace covering her shoulder. He felt the tiny hairs rise under his thumb. He felt his prick harden in response. _Jesus Christ, it's been so long_.

She didn't turn around.

He leaned in and placed his lips mere inches from the diamond stud that marked her ear as (he thought to himself) _Property of Chuck Bass—Still, and Don't You Forget It, Because He Doesn't Hand Out Three Carats for the Whoop-de-Fucking-Doo of It._

"Drinking alone, Waldorf?"

"Trying to, Bass. So why don't you scurry back under your rock?" She turned her head infinitesimally towards him, cast him a sidewise glance containing enough hostility to singe the lust right out of a lesser man's cock—and to flip his fantasy-switch firmly into hate-sex mode. Yanking her right arm out of his grasp, she drained the glass in her left hand and set it carefully down in front of her. She gestured to Steven behind the bar to bring her another.

_One, two, three, four, five._

Chuck counted the meticulously arranged empty glasses, then made eye contact with his employee. Steven hesitated, a hand poised over a bottle of olive juice, an eyebrow cocked questioningly in Chuck's direction.

Chuck could practically hear his thoughts:

_Shouldn't I cut her off now, Mr. Bass?_

Chuck's own eyebrow answered:

_Give the lady what she wants, Steven._

_But five drinks…and she's a small woman…_

_Give the lady what she wants, Steven._

_But you told me never to let her get like that again._

"Give the lady what she wants, Steven." Chuck abandoned the language of eyebrows in favor of something more direct.

Steven did too, reluctantly turning his back to Chuck as he mixed Blair's sixth cocktail. He tossed in an extra olive and set the drink on the coaster in front of her. She stared at it for five full seconds.

"Oh!" Her head snapped up, her voice full of innocent surprise, like a little girl who just figured out how to walk in her mother's heels. "Thank you, Steven."

Her fingers—delicate but strong—curled around the stem. She raised the glass to her lips, sloshing martini over the rim. It left a wet spot on her wrist.

Fingers and mouth. Fingers and mouth. Chuck gripped the bar as he remembered the ways she could use them. The vodka coated her lips—still bright red despite the numerous lipstick stains on the empty glasses—and she slurped down half the drink in one continuous gulp.

This was not Blair. This booze-swilling siren of loose, tousled hair and matte-crimson lips (and glazed unfocused eyes—but he didn't let himself dwell on that fact) was not the Emily-Post-in-training he'd dated for two and a half years. She was just some girl in a bar. Just some sad, drunk little girl who'd had more than she could handle and wandered across the path of the biggest womanizer between the Hudson and the East River. Chuck knew what to do with girls like that. He hadn't resorted to it since high school, but he still knew what to do. That kind of muscle memory didn't unlearn itself.

She finished the martini, tipping her head back to let the last drops dribble into her waiting mouth, her tongue peeking out from behind her teeth to catch them. Chuck took the empty glass from her and kept hold of her hand while he passed it off to Steven. He rubbed his thumb over the knob of her wrist, felt the splash of martini dried sticky on her skin. He raised her hand and pressed his lips to the blue vein coursing down her inner arm from her palm, felt the blood pulse beneath his mouth.

Her breath changed—one harsh inhalation interrupting the even rhythm. Casting her a glance from under his brows, Chuck saw her eyelids flutter closed. Her lower lip dropped open just a little. She looked both pensive and restless, waiting for his next move, longing for it. He licked the salt from the dried olive juice, breathed in her sweet scent, and nearly forgot in the pleasure of feeling, touching, sensing her again why he bothered in the first place.

She let out the tiniest whimper and pressed her wrist to his lips. But only for a fraction of a second. Then her eyes opened. He watched the dark, dilated pupils refocus as she took in his bent head, his nibbling mouth. She pulled her hand back sharply, twisted away from him, and nearly tumbled off the barstool.

"Careful, Blair." Chuck grabbed one arm and roughly yanked her upright. She was sloppy drunk. But she had winced at his touch and he wasn't enough of a gentleman to let that pass without some punishment.

She batted him away, slipping forward on the stool this time, forced to brace her hands against his chest or to fall on her face. Self-preservation dictated the former.

"You're so gross, Chuck! You're like…some really, really, gross guy."

Further evidence that this was not Blair. When Blair was pissed off, she used words Chuck had to look up after the fact, words like _obstreperous_, and _cisibeo_, and _pusillanimous_. This girl's drunken mind had reeled into oblivion somewhere between the first "gross" and her concluding hiccup.

Her fingers clutching his shirt felt a lot like Blair's fingers, though. And her brown eyes looked exactly like Blair's when she looked up at him sadly, a layer of tears dewing her lower lashes.

"That's not why I came here. Not to see you. So don't touch me." She sniffled.

"If Humpty Dumpty could stay on her barstool, I wouldn't have to."

He moved her hands from his chest to the bar, helping her hold herself steady on her seat. He heard a thump below, and when he felt confident that she wouldn't tip over if he let go, he ducked down by the stool to see that her shoes had fallen off.

_Red soles. Fucking Laboutins._

"Thank you." Blair's watery, weepy voice greeted him from above. "I'm fine. You can go now."

There were a lot of things Chuck could have said in response. _I'm not leaving you alone drunk off your ass in the middle of Midtown. _Or _I'm calling George to take you home now._ Or _Goddammit, just forgive me already and stop putting us both through this._ Or even, _Nice to see you again, B._

But with the memory of those red-soled implements of heartbreak and destruction lodged in his mind, there was really only one possible response for Chuck to make.

"Come on, Blair. We both know you came here hoping I'd fuck you again."

"What?" Her voice rose five octaves, anger allowing a moment of slightly sober reaction. "How dare you? You're as crude as you are delusional."

"Spare me the outraged virgin act." Chuck leaned back casually, elbows against the bar, smirking in a way calculated to tense every muscle in her neck. "The last time you walked through those doors, I had your ankles behind your ears two hours later. Or do you really think I'll believe that you forgot I live here?"

"I wanted a dirty martini and Steven makes the best ones!" Blair shouted. The handful of wealthy, older guests murmuring quietly in their booths and at tables for two looked up in distress. This was not the scene they expected to find at the Palace Hotel on a Tuesday night.

Blair ignored the white-haired women in Chanel suits, protected from their disgust by a cloak of alcohol and rage. "And I don't need to come to you for sex. There are dozens of men that I could sleep with if I wanted. They throw themselves at me. Carter's been begging me to sleep with him since he and Serena broke up. You're an easy lay, Chuck, but that's not good enough for me anymore."

She started to shift her bottom off the high stool, her black lace dress riding up her legs, her bare feet searching for the floor. "Now if you'll excuse me…"

Chuck grabbed her by the waist and thrust her back into her seat. "I'm the best goddamn lay you've ever had and you know it," he whispered. "And Carter Baizen's not going to come near you. If anyone fucks you tonight, Blair, it's me."

Blair threw her hands in the air, sweeping Carter Baizen and Chuck Bass and all the dozens of potential fucks to the side in one broad gesture. "Fine! Fuck away, Chuck! See if I care. Getting fucked by you will be the perfect end to a day of getting fucked all around."

She hung her head suddenly and wobbled under his hands, swaying a little on the stool. He tightened his grip. "What the hell are you talking about, Waldorf?"

"Fucked up, fucked over, fucking…" She bit her lip and sniffled, but she wouldn't raise her head to look at him. "Just plain fucked. I've completely ruined my life."

The sniffles sounded dangerously close to sobs, gunfire quick and each one accompanied by an awkward hitch of her shoulders. Chuck took her pointed little chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her head up to look at him.

She started to cry, and not that perfectly pretty one-crystal-tear-falls-down-the-lady's-damask-cheek kind of crying she deployed to win arguments. Real tears, thick and messy, coating her nose and chin, dripping to the dark silk of her lap. The soggy, sloppy tears of a girl with six dirty martinis running through her blood. "I'm a cheater," she whimpered. Then her face crumpled like a wadded up tissue and she laid her head against the bar, sobbing into the circle of her arms.

A boyfriend. He hadn't heard anything about it. He couldn't figure out if he was angry she'd moved on, or happy the asshole wasn't enough for her, or worried that his intel sources were slipping. Before he could ask, _so who's the unlucky guy?_ she lifted her head and—cheeks gleaming with tears— stared at the row of premium vodkas on the second shelf.

"I've been thrown out of NYU for academic dishonesty. I'm a twenty-one-year-old college dropout."

Chuck laughed. Just once, just one sharp bark of laughter. But it was loud, and she heard it, and she looked at him with so much mingled anger and despair he wanted to slice open his intestines and bleed out at her feet.

But really, the whole thing was ridiculous. How could he help it?

"That's impossible Blair. Cyrus is a huge donor. They'd never kick out his stepdaughter. He wouldn't let that happen."

"He doesn't know. I didn't tell them. You're the only one who knows."

"Then I'll fix it." He didn't consider his words, just answered. "I'll put my best people on it, the legal staff. We'll appeal."

She shook her head, shaking harder the more he said. "No. This was the appeal. There aren't any left. No more recourse, they said. They just told me to leave."

"How long have you been dealing with this?"

Blair wiped at her face, smearing her mascara and eyeliner toward her hairline. Her eyes closed sleepily and she laid her head on the bar again, pillowed by her hands.

"March," she mumbled. "I wrote the paper in March. I bought it online."

March. The month she left him. The month she found him flirting with his new VP of media relations, his hand on her thigh, her skirt four inches higher than God and Coco Chanel had intended. The month he started to wonder if a life of sober fidelity to a college-student girlfriend was worthy of an almost twenty-year-old billionaire CEO whose face—his VP promised—would soon be in every newspaper and magazine in the country.

_Jesus Christ, this is my fault. I did this to her._

She was sleeping, the carved lip of the bar jutting into her face and pushing against her puckered lips. If he left her there any longer it would leave a mark.

"Steven, see that Miss Waldorf's shoes make it to my suite."

As Steven nodded, mixing a Singapore Sling for a grey-haired, suit-clad executive type—and trying to deflect the man's attention from his boss's girlfriend slumped in the corner—Chuck put an arm against Blair's back and an arm behind her knees and hoisted her drunk, sleeping weight into his arms. She curled against him, head under his chin, nose nuzzling his neck, fingers clutching his shirtfront.

"Do you have a purse Blair?" He didn't see one—it was probably in some cabby's collection by now.

She shook her head, but not in answer to his question. "I'm not gonna sleep with you, Chuck." Her eyes never opened as he carried her to the elevators.

"That's okay, Waldorf. I prefer my sex partners conscious." As he waited for the elevator, eyes fixed on the glowing circular button surrounded by filigreed brass, he couldn't resist pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

She snuggled closer and let out a snore, so he kissed her head again. And since she'd never remember it in the morning, he whispered in her ear, "You didn't come for the martinis, Blair. Everyone knows the St Regis makes them best."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_I want a hero: an uncommon want_

_--Lord Byron—Don Juan, Canto I_

****

Bright sky burned on the other side of Blair's closed eyelids. (_Where the hell is my eyeshade?)_ Nearby, someone clanked silver against china, rolled wheels across marble, squeaked chairs against hardwood. (_Where the hell are my earplugs?)_

She lay silently and completely still. Her mouth was coated and sealed with scum. Her brain twirled inside her head with every breath. She tried not breathing. She lasted ten seconds before her lungs ached for nourishment and her stomach joined them, burbling below. Sucking in a smooth breath, she cracked open one eyelid.

Light. Light like a spear. Spears of light jabbing their way through her eyeball directly into her brain.

She closed her eye with a groan and covered her face with her arm. The motion twisted her stomach, or tilted it, or something, because a wave of nausea washed over her. She moved her hand to cover her mouth and groaned again.

"Morning, sunshine."

The voice was husky, low, and right by her head. This time she opened both eyes, and when the rays of light organized themselves into a sunny bedroom at The Palace, she found Chuck Bass sitting on the bed beside her, holding a glass of something green. Or gray.

"Drink it."

She tried to shake her head, but only winced. She tried to ask, _what is that?_ but it came out more like "Urrrmf."

"Seriously, drink it. If you feel half as bad as you look, you need it."

When she didn't respond, didn't move, didn't even look at the no-doubt repulsive concoction he waved before her, he rolled his eyes and got up from the bed.

"So we're doing this the hard way?" He knelt on the floor beside her, snaked his arm under her neck, and tilted her head up. He pressed the glass to her lips. "Drink."

She was too tired, too sore, too close to dying a horrible death that would later be recorded for eternity as one of the five most painful deaths of all time to resist. She opened her lips and gulped the sludgy liquid.

It was foul, tasted like sulfur, blueberries, and tar. She managed three swallows before sputtering and shaking her head. "What the hell is that shit?" she croaked.

"Trust me, it's better if you don't know." He put the glass back to her lips. "Drink more, Blair. Just a little."

He asked nicely, so she took two more mouthfuls before pushing his arm away. It was probably not medicinal at all. It would be just like Chuck to mix up the grossest combination of flavors he could imagine and then force-feed them to her to intensify her torture.

He set the glass down on the bedside table and walked out of the room. He came back a few seconds later with a glass of water and two little brown tablets, which he held out to her.

"Advil. For the headache."

She nodded her thanks, grimacing with the pain that spiked from one temple to the other, and took the pills from him. Sitting up, holding a glass, and swallowing—she never realized how exhausting those activities were. They should be added to the decathlon.

She collapsed back onto the pillows and shut her eyes, sensing his movement as he walked away. "My brain is bleeding," she whined.

Chuck laughed. "You're fine. You're only getting what you deserve. You know Steven makes his dirties strong. And you know you had way more than you can handle."

Blair's lip twisted with annoyance and she glared at him beneath lowered brows, but she didn't argue. Chuck turned his attention back to the book spread across his lap.

He sat a few feet away from the bed on a dark wood chair—one of the dining room chairs he had apparently brought into the bedroom. He was fully dressed. Beautifully dressed, as always, in a charcoal three-piece suit, the jacket of which hung over the chair back. His tie was bright orange and tied in a Windsor knot. Autumnal, like the color of leaves in the Park out the windows. Blair guessed she'd find a silk pocket square of the same shade tucked into his jacket if she checked.

He was dressed for a board meeting or an interview with the President. And she was wearing…

She was wearing—

Her hands stole under the blankets and touched her bare breasts. Her bare stomach. Her bare legs and bare…

_Holy shit!_

He heard her shocked inhalation and looked up.

"Chuck. Last night. Did we?" She couldn't even say the words.

Eons passed as she waited for him to respond. When he did, it was with a terse, "Yes."

Blair closed her eyes with a whimper. She'd gotten drunk and slept with Chuck. She had experienced the full gamut of mortification in a little less than twenty-four hours. She had fucked him and didn't even remember it.

The thought made her unexpectedly sad. It was maybe the last time they would ever sleep together, and it was totally gone from her mind. Yet another thing in her life she couldn't hold onto.

"You were amazing, Blair," he crooned, low and silky, his sex voice. "You've never been so flexible. Have you been doing yoga? Ballet? Contortionism? I didn't know the human leg could rotate in that direction."

"Fuck you, Basshole," Blair ground out between her teeth, hating herself for falling for his joke, hating him more for making it.

He chuckled at her eloquence and stood. She watched him lay his book on the chair and stride into his walk-in closet. "You were passed out cold." His voice carried clear in the quiet morning. "I didn't think you'd want to sleep in your dress." He walked back into the room, carrying her black lace dress on a hanger. "Narciso Rodriguez deserves better than that. And see? Padded hanger, just like you insist."

"And what about the things under my dress?"

"You were wearing a constrictive corset. It didn't look comfortable. It left welts."

"And my underwear?"

"Blair, I know how much you hate sleeping in a thong."

"So stripping me naked and putting me in your bed was your random act of kindness for the week? Is that what you're telling me?"

He tossed the dress onto the bed and picked up the book. "No. My good deeds consist of carrying your drunk ass out of the bar before someone else beat me to it and reading—" he checked the last page of the book, "—three hundred and seventy-two pages of the NYU student handbook to see if there's some way to get you out of this mess. Seeing you naked was my reward."

"Oh." Blair sank back to the pillows, her outrage deflated. "Well, I hope you got a good look, because that's the last time you're going to see me like this." Her pride insisted she keep up the game, but judging by his smirk, he could tell her heart wasn't in it. "What did you find?"

"You told me last night you've already had your appeal. Is that true?"

Blair nodded.

"Then it doesn't look good." Chuck frowned, tossed the book on the chair. "I'll have to throw some money at the problem, get the trustees to rewrite the rules. Academic institutions are very prickly about having their precious honor codes ignored, but if the check's big enough, maybe…five hundred million—"

"Five hundred million!" Blair interrupted, sputtering. She shook her head, trying to grasp the enormity of the check, the enormity of the problem, the enormity of Chuck's determination to solve this for her. "No, no, no, Chuck. You cannot write a check to NYU for more than my family's entire net worth!"

Chuck raised an eyebrow—as if to say _Really? Less than five hundred mil?_— and Blair bristled.

"Well we can't all be billionaires."

"No, but I am. So let me do this for you."

"No." Blair had to look away. She wanted too much to take him up on the offer. And there was no way in hot hell she was going five hundred million dollars in debt to Mephistopheles. Not even her soul was worth that much.

"I don't want to be the girl who was kicked out of school until her rich ex-boyfriend bribed them to take her back. I'd never get over the humiliation."

"I'll make the donation anonymously."

"I'm terrified to think of what you'd want in return," Blair scoffed. "You'll have me servicing your business partners and stripping at board meetings. Delivering packages in a g-string and pasties."

"You paint an enticing picture."

"Oh, like you haven't thought of it already?"

"I'll do nothing but think about it from now on. But I don't want any payment other than your continued academic excellence. Take the money, Blair."

"No."

"Take it."

"No!"

"Why not?"

"Because, I did it!" The words hung in the air. Like a neon arrow pointing at her head, they blinked out _guilty, guilty, guilty._ No three words—not even of eight letters—had ever scorched so hard coming out.

"I cheated," she said softly.

"So?"

Blair had to laugh, despite blinking back tears. Only Chuck could respond with that who-gives-a-shit swagger. "So I deserve this. Just like my hangover. You drink too much, you get sick. That's how the world works."

Chuck sat on the bed next to her. The mattress dipped under his weight, and her body slid toward him beneath the sheets. She scooted to the other side of the bed, careful to keep the coverlet tucked up by her chin, careful to ignore the goosebumps traveling up the arm that had briefly brushed against his hip.

He didn't comment on her skittishness, perhaps carefully ignoring some things of his own.

"You _deserve_ to graduate with a BA in history," he insisted. "You deserve to graduate cum laude. You deserve to hang that diploma on the wall of your office, and you deserve to go to the best law school in the country. You have worked harder for this than anyone I know, and you deserve it more than anyone else does. That's how the world _should_ work."

She shrugged. "True. NYU was beyond lucky the day I chose them." The regular lines, the accustomed role in the fiction they told each other about 'How Blair Waldorf Wound Up at NYU.' It didn't fit anymore. They needed a new story.

"I threw it all away the day I cheated, Chuck." That was a start.

"There were extenuating circumstances. You were under a lot of pressure." And that was another one.

As Chuck stared at his hand on the bedspread, Blair realized that he'd put it together, the date of her crime, the date of his. Nine months after the fact, the bastard wanted to make it all better, soothe the wounds he'd slashed wide open with flattery, a five followed by lots of zeros, and a fairy tale about a handsome boy who saved a desperate girl.

_Well fuck that_.

"I _was_ under a lot of pressure. I was really preoccupied. I was spending a lot of time online, and I got caught up exploring the city."

_I was possessed by thoughts of you cheating on me. I spent hours a day scanning your e-mails for proof that you'd cheated on me. I tailed you from Columbus Circle to Battery Park dreading I'd catch you cheating on me._

She folded her arms over the sheet and gave him her patented Blair-Waldorf-is-a-stone-cold-bitch-and-you-forget-this-at-your-peril glare. "But I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway. That's what happens when you cheat. And these are the consequences."

Chuck's mouth puckered and his eyes narrowed. "Subtle, even for you Blair. Do you want to spell out my sins so I can properly flagellate, or should we take my undying remorse as a given?"

"I haven't said a word about you, Bass. Guilty conscience speaking?"

He sneered and stood from the bed. "I don't have anything to feel guilty about. I didn't cheat on you."

And like that, they were having the conversation she'd avoided nine months earlier by bursting out of the suite in a blaze of rage and flying shoes, then continued to avoid for the rest of the spring by ignoring his texts, dropping his calls to voice mail, and finally changing her number.

She'd always known they'd have it eventually. She just hadn't anticipated being naked and trapped in his bed.

"Yet," she answered him sharply as he walked toward the door. "You hadn't cheated on me yet. It was only a matter of time."

He stopped and turned to stare at her, hands on his hips. "You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

"_You_ can't know that when _I_ don't even know that."

"You don't know you _wouldn't_ have cheated. And I'm pretty sure you knew you were thinking about it."

"Thinking isn't doing, Blair."

She sniffed, a puff of not-all-that-amused laughter escaping. "For Chuck Bass, thinking is close enough to doing for me to be worried. And I know what I saw that day in the office."

His shoulders tensed. "You didn't see anything."

"So I was hallucinating? Did you slip some LSD in my morning frappuccino? I saw you in your office, some redheaded slut sitting on your desk, and your hand playing one-on-one with her upper thigh. I know what comes next. That hand only has one destination, and it was right inside her tacky purple satin knickers."

Chuck stalked to the foot of the bed, braced his hands against the baseboard, and leaned toward her. "Nothing happened. I fired that bitch the day after you left."

"Good! She was shit at her job. But you don't deserve a medal for it. And it doesn't change the fact that you were close to breaking. I saw it, Chuck. I could tell."

"Maybe you're right, Blair," he growled. "Maybe I would have cheated. Does it make you feel better to hear that?"

It didn't. He knew it wouldn't. He took away the pleasure of her _I told you so_ before she could even experience it. Bastard.

"And if I did? What then? You would have found out, and thrown shit at me, and called me a Basshole, and left. Which is pretty much what you did anyway."

Blair chewed a cuticle, ruining a perfectly good manicure.

"But maybe you didn't have to, Blair. Maybe you were wrong."

Blair dropped her hand to her lap.

"Maybe I would have kept on being the faithful and adoring boyfriend I'd been for more than two years."

Blair bit her cheek and met his stare.

"Maybe that was the test, and I passed it, and I would never want to cheat again."

Every _maybe_ sounded like a _how could you?_ Every _maybe_ was a _you were wrong._

"Now we'll never know."

She thought of the day she caught him in his office. She thought of the silence in the suite after she returned home. She thought of the moment she realized she had a paper to write and thirty minutes to get to class. She thought of the moment she handed her purchased paper to her professor. The moment she realized she'd become a pathetic liar, obsessed with her boyfriend's dick and where he put it.

"I can live with not knowing," she answered. "I couldn't live with maybe."

His jaw tensed. "I'm happy everything worked out so well for you. But I wanted to know. I wanted the chance to prove myself."

"And I wanted to have you forever! I wanted us to be happy! I wanted you to love me like I loved you!"

_Completely. Entirely. Overwhelmingly._ The words beat against her brain like waves against a dock, each one a slap, each one a reminder of her inadequacy. She pushed them back, just like she hid her tears before they spilled with a quick wipe of her fingers.

"We don't always get what we want. Clearly."

"I wanted that, too," he said quietly.

"Sure, right."

"I did. I loved you, too. And I wanted you forever. I just—forgot for a little while."

"Great. You were smart. Let's both forget we had this tedious conversation and move on with our lives."

"I'm sorry, Blair." She looked at him in surprise. "I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm so fucking sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't—"

He broke off with a mumbled curse, walked away from the bed. He ran his hand through his hair, grabbing it at the roots in his first.

"I got you waffles," he said, turning.

"What?"

"From room service. I thought they'd be easy on your stomach."

_Jesus Christ_, Blair thought_, every time_. He did this every time. Every time she got together her little mental bonfire of Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck and readied herself to light the match, he did this. Those sad, open eyes and some sweet little gesture, empty and portentous at once. He was like a hermit crab on his back, hard shell changing to sad, leggy interior, soft and begging for her to break him. And she could never bring herself to crush the little crab with the heel of her shoe.

But this time would be different.

"I got you strawberries. And whipped cream. Just in case you wanted them."

Definitely different. She was different. She _would_ be different.

"I know they're not as good as Dorota's, but the Palace kitchen's the best I could get on short notice."

He remembered.

_A late, drunk arrival at her mother's penthouse after some boring Christmas party. He kissed the snowflakes in her hair and pulled her to the kitchen, hands under her coat, under her skirt, under her skin. They giggled and shushed each other as they pulled that night's dessert from the giant fridge—Belgian waffles with cherries, peaches, apples. He crammed indecently large forkfuls into her mouth, then laughed as she tried to chew. The memory tasted like crème fraiche, syruped strawberries, and champagne-flavored kisses. _

"Nothing's as good as Dorota's waffles," she whispered.

He smiled. "Dreams of her waffles wake me regularly at three in the morning."

_You're an idiot, Blair Waldorf_, she thought as she answered, "The Palace kitchen's an acceptable substitute."

_You never learn._

Chuck didn't look at her, just nodded brusquely as though something had been decided, and checked his Piaget. He grabbed his suit jacket from the chair and swung it over his shoulder. As Blair suspected, a hint of orange flashed in the pocket.

"I have to be at the office soon. It's after ten."

Blair lay back with a sigh. "I should go to my mother's and tell my parents where I've been the last twenty-four hours."

The thought of explaining to her mother why she never came home the night Daddy got in from Paris—while somehow avoiding the words _cheater_, _expelled_, _drunk_, _naked_, and _Chuck Bass_—made want to bury her head in a toilet bowl. God was seriously overdoing the divine retribution act. The hangover would have been enough.

"Have breakfast with me first," said the version of Chuck she knew best, the one who treated orders like endearments and demands like professions of love.

"Sure—as long as you don't pull your peeping tom act again while I'm getting dressed."

She'd do anything to delay the maternal interview, even have brunch with the devil. That's what she told herself. But after Chuck left the room, murmuring his suggestive plans for her ass the next time she showed up drunk at the Palace, and after Blair tossed a goose down pillow at his retreating back, the comforting familiarity of it all propelled her out of bed and into the shower.

When an earthquake pulls your life apart, it's easy to cling to the rubble.


	3. Chapter 3

Sermons and Soda-Water

Chapter 3

_And one by one in turn, some grand mistake_

_Casts off its bright skin yearly, like the snake._

_Lord Byron—Don Juan—Canto V_

* * *

Blair kept her iPhone's address book meticulously organized. She declined to enter the names of people she met at parties unless they came bundled with at least two corresponding channels of communication. At the beginning of each school year, she changed the address of every college student in her files to reflect their new dormitory. When acquaintances married, she updated their entries as soon as the vows were said and when they divorced, as soon as the papers were filed. She absolutely refused to let an outdated cell phone number linger in her database for more than twelve hours.

But Blair's comprehensive and excruciatingly complete iPhone address book had one notable omission. Nowhere in its cross-referenced digital files did the name "Chuck Bass" appear.

The "C"s skipped quite merrily from "Cameron" to "Cyrus," while "Archibald, Nate," preceded "Burney, Katherine." The briefly tolerated "Devil (Incarnate)" no longer followed "Dan (I Hate You Serena) Humphrey." And without question, "Best Boyfriend Ever" had been summarily booted from the "B"s. All reference to Charles Bartholomew Bass's whereabouts—telephonic, electronic, or physical—had gone wherever good little bits and bytes go when their existence is no longer deemed necessary.

It didn't matter. Lying across the foot of her bed, listening to her father's and Cyrus's laughter float up the stairwell from the parlor, Blair could still trace every digit of all four of his phone numbers. Even worse, she could do it with her eyes closed.

A bad habit, she often told herself. A nervous twitch. One that started the day her phone asked her, "Are you sure you want to delete the entry for **Chuck Bass**?" and she answered, resoundingly, "Don't ask me that, just delete the motherfucker already!" Which meant, "Yes."

Sitting in lecture halls, her hand would find her phone in her coat pocket and dial phantom calls to his office. On double dates with Serena and Carter and whatever junior associate at Skadden or entry-level analyst at Goldman they'd offered up as her companion, she'd tap out Morse code signals to both of his cell phones and his hotel suite, every one an S.O.S.

She never once pressed send, not even accidentally, so she'd learned to regard her finger fidgets as a vestigial relic of her longest relationship—like wisdom teeth or the appendix. A good doctor never removed an organ, however useless, until it caused a problem. This didn't cause problems. This wasn't a problem.

Until now.

Over and over again, her thumb found the numbers on the touch screen. Over and over, it hovered above the final link in the cellular chain that would connect her phone to his. Over and over she pressed cancel.

"Blair? What's taking so long? Your cocktail's getting warm."

Her mother's strident voice barreled up the stairs as aggressively as her body would no doubt soon follow. Blair could envision the scene already: Her mother's arrival at the bedroom door and the disapproving dialogue that would result.

_Blair, why are you moping up here instead of greeting your father?_

_Blair, why are you still in a bathrobe?_

_Blair, this is not like you at all._

_What has gotten into you, young lady?_

Gritting her teeth, Blair hoisted herself off the bed and bounded over to the doorway. "Be down in a minute, Mom," she called. "Just putting on the finishing touches!"

She closed the door much more softly than she ached to and pressed her forehead to the wood. Her shoulders hunched. Her thumb continued to stroke the touch screen, dialing his office, his personal cell phone, his business cell phone.

Pressing send.

She looked up with a gasp, stepped back from the door, held the phone out arm's length in front of her. She could hear the faint echo of its tinny ring.

_Shit_. Too late. Even if she hung up, his phone would display the record of her call.

She held it to her ear, sitting on the bed. She waited for the answering "Bass" on the other end.

"I assumed from your silence at breakfast that you'd had enough of me this morning."

Blair swallowed at the low, raspy voice with its note of instant, smiling recognition. "Nine months not long enough for you to delete my number, Bass?"

"Nine months not long enough for you to forget mine, Waldorf?"

Blair gave thanks he couldn't see her blush. "Please. I got it from Serena."

_Note to self: Fill Serena in on cover story._

"Must be something important, then. For you to actually mention my name to my sister."

"Yes, I…" Blair picked at the fraying end of her robe tie as she cast her mind about for some reason, any reason, to have called him. Any reason other than longstanding habit, sudden absentmindedness, and the fact that she missed him so much she could scream.

"I wanted to thank you for the waffles. Again."

"You're welcome. Again. It was nothing. Again."

"They were delicious."

"Yes, they were. I'm glad you enjoyed them."

The line fell silent, except for his soft breathing on the other end.

"So, that's it? You braved the Inquisition a la Serena in order to call me and repeat the exact conversation we had with each other eight hours ago?"

Blair forced a laugh. "No, of course not. That would be ridiculous."

Another silence.

Chuck sighed. "Not that I don't love hearing your voice, but seriously, Blair, why are you calling?"

"Well, you're the past master on parental disappointment, right? I thought you could give me some expert counsel."

It just came out—her anxiety, his unaffectedness, and her intimate knowledge of every one of his pressure points culminating in one of her quintessentially bitchy attacks. She held her breath and waited for his response.

"I used to be," he said with a laugh. "Lily actually tried to convince me I still was after you left me, but she didn't succeed. One of the many advantages to being an orphan is never disappointing your parents again."

Blair bit her lip, detecting the bitterness in his voice he hid behind the easy acceptance of his fate and hating herself for putting it there. She lay flat on the bed, her feet on the floor, toes curling into the thick carpet.

"Well since I'm not an orphan, I thought maybe you could help me figure out the best way to crush my parents' hopes and dreams for my future."

"You haven't told them yet? What have you been doing since you got home?"

_Trying not to call you, asshole._ Blair clenched her fist against the bed, digging her nails into her palm. "Spare me the lecture, Bass. I just want to know how to break the news to them. So how did you use to do it with Bart?"

"Unfortunately for you, Bart kept PIs. He knew about my misdeeds before I did." Chuck sighed. "Blair, you've just got to tell them. It won't be as bad as you think."

"Yes it will," Blair moaned. "You have no idea, Chuck. My father is so proud of my LSAT score, he can't stop talking about my future clerkship for Justice Sotomayor. And then there's Cyrus, who fully expects me to be valedictorian. I can't do this."

"Yes, you can."

"No, they'll hate me."

"Your parents love you, Blair. It'll suck, but you have to get it over with."

"I can't. I can't do this." Blair breath quickened, her lungs gasping, grasping for breath. "I can't do this alone!"

"What do you need? What can I do?" His voice was steady and unflappable, the low-pitched tones as familiar to her as hum of Manhattan streets outside her window.

"I need you here, Chuck. I just…don't want to be alone."

She bit her free hand as his end of the line went silent. Nine agonizing months of perfect, cool, unapproachable distance and she went and ruined it in less than twenty-four hours. She'd never forgive herself.

"Sure," he said at last. "When do you want me there? I have to finish some things at the office tonight—"

"No need to come tonight," Blair quickly responded. "Tomorrow. Come for dinner tomorrow."

"Thanksgiving dinner?" Chuck mumbled ruefully. "You honestly think I should join you for that?"

_Yes, God, yes. I need you, I need you, I need you._

"Why not? I know you won't join Lily and Eric and Serena for dinner with the Humphreys, and your usual back-up companions won't be around. Even whores have families."

"Yeah, but if the money's right…"

Blair grunted in disgust, knowing he expected it of her. "Just be here at five-thirty."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, Blair"—Chuck paused— "but if you want to soften up your parents, inviting me to dinner is probably not the way to go."

"Nonsense. Daddy and Cyrus are always happy to see you."

"Your father and Cyrus aren't the ones who worry me."

Despite what she had said, they weren't the ones who worried Blair, either. "My mother will be polite," she insisted. "In front of the non-family guests at any rate. Just pay her some compliments and stay out of her way."

She broke off as she remembered—he'd given Nate almost those exact words a year before when his best friend had asked how Chuck managed her mother so well. "I don't need to tell you this," she laughed. "You've always known how to deal with Eleanor Waldorf."

"That was before I broke her daughter's heart. Again," he added obligatorily.

Blair's smile faded and she sat up, running a hand through her tangled hair. "Thanks for reminding me."

"I didn't think you were in danger of forgetting." He wasn't joking this time, or teasing her. She could tell that he was serious. He didn't think she would forget. The day before, she would have agreed.

But now… the strength of her desire to forgive him terrified her.

She returned the conversation to the safer territory of her mother's moods. "I'm not a miracle worker, Chuck. You'll have to content yourself with the approval of two out of three parental units."

"I'd rather the odds were three out of four Waldorf-Roses."

"Well I called and invited you, didn't I?"

"You did. That's why I'll say yes."

She released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding and stood from the bed, pacing to her mirror.

She studied her reflection as she answered. "You won't regret this, I promise." Her pores were huge and her eyes bloodshot and puffy from drinking, crying, and dehydration. She needed Dorota's clay mask and a cucumber compress, pronto.

"Yes, I will. But I'll do it anyway. For you."

Blair smiled and piled her hair on top of her head with one hand, experimenting with a cascade of curls draping to her neck. "Thank you, Bass."

"And to think, I was sad that I'd miss out on Harold's pie this year."

Blair released her hair and watched it swing down to her shoulders. "I would have sent you a piece, Chuck."

He laughed. "No you wouldn't have. You're a vindictive bitch, Waldorf."

Only in Chuck's throaty rasp would the words sound so tender. She held the phone a little tighter.

"See you at five-thirty."

The line went silent, the cellular chain broken, but Blair kept the phone in her hand as she opened her closet door and started pulling out dresses to wear to Thanksgiving dinner, her thumb making phantom phone calls all the while.


	4. Chapter 4

Sermons and Soda-Water Chapter 4

_She had a good opinion of advice,_

_Like all who give and eke receive it gratis,_

_For which small thanks are still the market price,_

_Even where the article at highest rate is._

_--Lord Byron—Don Juan, Canto XV_

* * *

The doors slid open noiselessly, a perfect proscenium framing the foyer of the penthouse. Eleanor Waldorf-Rose stood with elegant stillness beside the pedestal table with its massive arrangement of orange and russet flowers, her smile a Pavlovian response to the ding of the elevator bell.

Chuck watched the smile wither as he emerged from the wood-paneled gloom.

"Mrs. Rose. Happy Thanksgiving."

She folded her arms across the pleated gray of her blouse. "Chuck. Here to make the holiday happier, I see."

"At Blair's invitation."

"Really?" She raised one eyebrow. Given the Botox addiction currently ravaging the dowager population of the Upper East Side, Chuck had to admire the feat, though he resisted its efforts at intimidation.

"Yes. I was told to arrive at five-thirty."

She ostentatiously raised her left arm with its thin gold watch. "Well, right on time, aren't you?"

He nodded his acknowledgment.

"She's in her room." Eleanor gestured toward the staircase. "I'm sure you remember the way. You'll excuse me if I don't escort you there. I have to speak with the caterer about an unexpected addition to our party."

"I wouldn't dream of inconveniencing you," he murmured, layering the honey in his voice as thick as he could make it.

The thin line of her lips tightened, but she turned without responding to the provocation. The clacking of her heels against the marble floors accompanied his stroll to the staircase. He took them two at a time.

Blair opened her bedroom door before he could knock, grabbing him by the jacket and yanking him inside.

"Finally! Were you going to make me wait all night?"

"Blair, it's 5:31 exactly."

"That's one more minute of hell you made me suffer through."

"It was an extra minute of heaven for your mother." He stumbled over his feet as she pulled him across the room, her fists clutching the dark silk of his dinner jacket. "Why didn't you tell her you invited me?"

Blair stopped in front of her chaiseand whipped Chuck around. "It's going to be a night of rude shocks. I figured I'd ease her into it." She shoved him into the seat. "Now start thinking. Solve this. Chop chop!"

She clapped her hands like a Victorian duchess summoning her stable boy. It was the gesture of the old Queen B, and Chuck hid a smile as he tried to smooth the five finger-shaped creases marring each of his lapels. "I don't think well on command. Or on an empty stomach."

"I know you had a very full brunch this morning, Chuck. Serena told me." She perched on the little white chair in front of her vanity.

"Oh, you're not ignoring her calls anymore? She was surprised, by the way, to hear that you got my phone number from her yesterday. She was under the impression you hadn't spoken since Monday." Chuck leaned back in the chaise as Blair's lips parted in confusion. "I guess it slipped her mind."

She swallowed, reclaiming her equanimity with visible effort. "You know Serena. So flighty."

"I do know Serena."

"And I'm in such a state, I hardly know what day it is." Blair pressed her fingers to her temples, leaning one elbow against the chair back. "I'm half-afraid to even show my face downstairs, looking as haggard as I do."

Glinting gold jacquard encased her curves in a tight skirt and strapless bodice. She had tied her hair in a loose ponytail at her nape. It fell over one shoulder, leaving the smooth column of her neck visible from drooping head to curving spine. She was the farthest thing from haggard Chuck had ever seen in his life, and even if his eyes hadn't recognized it, his cock sure as hell did.

"One look at you in that dress and everyone downstairs will forget what day it is, too."

She dropped her glance as a smile flickered in the corners of her mouth. "I try to keep up appearances."

"You do more than try."

She didn't fight the compliment, and he could tell by the way her shoulders relaxed, the way she turned her head, offering more of her bare neck to his view, that she knew just how hard he was.

His hand reached into his jacket pocket and touched the small red box that rested inside.

_No. Not yet._

He withdrew his hand from his pocket. "You called for help, and I came. So what do you want from me?"

"You know what I want." She looked at him like he was functionally retarded, and he felt the urge to retaliate with _Then get your ass on that bed_ or _Do we have time for that before dinner?_ or _Glad to see I'm as irresistible as ever. _An opening like that just cried to be filled.

But he didn't. He was good.

"Say it anyway."

Her chest rose and fell as she puffed a breath in exasperation. She always hated playing games by other people's rules. "I want you to tell me how to let my parents know I've been expelled." The _obviously_ went unsaid, even if it suffused her tone.

Chuck stood and walked over to her chair, looking down at her.

"They don't need to know you've been expelled. They just need to know you're not going back to NYU. The easiest way to tell them is to give them a reason you're not going back."

"But the reason is my expulsion." She rolled her eyes. "Keep up, Chuck. It's not that difficult."

Annoyance wrinkled her forehead and nose. He wanted to smooth the two deep furrows between her brows with his thumb and taunt her about crows' feet and her mother's plastic surgeon.

Instead, he rested his hand on the dainty white chair, squeezing the carved wood. "This is about managing expectations, Blair. This is about controlling the conversation. Leading them to the conclusion you want them to reach."

She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder in an offhand gesture. "Thank you for that glimpse at your future Business 101 seminar. I don't need a tutorial on tactics of negotiation. I just need you to tell me how to break my parents' hearts and get out of this alive."

"But that is a negotiation. Everything is a negotiation."

_Even this, though you don't know it yet_.

He let go of the chair and she visibly relaxed, only to tense again when he strolled to her bed. "When something goes wrong at Bass, I don't want my people to bring me problems. I want them to bring me solutions. The board wants the same thing from me. And I learned that from dealing with Bart."

Chuck flung himself on the bed and leaned back against the blue satin pillows, his hands folded behind his head. "I'd come to him and I'd say shit like, you know, _I don't look at this as a suspension for smoking in the field house. I look at this as an exciting new opportunity for community service._"

Blair swiveled in her chair, eyeing him in the mirror while she fiddled with the brush and comb and lipsticks littering the vanity. "And he bought that?"

"No. But he appreciated the effort."

She picked up a black tube and uncapped it. The rounded pink cylinder rose and sank with the twists of her fingers.

Chuck slipped his hand in his pocket again and rubbed his thumb over the box's rounded corners.

Their gazes met within the frame of the mirror. "Give them a solution, Blair. Come to them with options instead of desperation."

Blair's throat moved as she swallowed. "I don't have any options, Chuck. That's kind of the problem."

"Yes, you do. You just haven't thought them through."

Blair recapped the lipstick without applying it, set it carefully in the rosewood chest that held her makeup, and turned to face him. "Okay, so what are they?"

"You can transfer and finish your education somewhere else."

"I'm a senior," Blair scoffed. "It's too late."

"People do it."

"_People_." Blair injected as much scorn as possible into the two syllables. Then she looked down at her hands in her lap. "Who would take me? I cheated, and it's on my record. I'd be lucky to get into Hunter."

"You could go to Hunter."

"No, I could not," she squeaked, shaking her head in disbelief. "I just got used to being at NYU instead of Yale. I can't lower myself any further."

"So college is out."

"College is out."

Chuck pictured Blair's mental list—on gilt-edged Smythson stationery, of course—and imagined her crossing of the first item under _Options_ with a gold Mont Blanc pen: _College, _with a great big hatch through it.

Time to move on to the next one.

"You could work for your mother at Waldorf Designs."

She brightened. "I could. That's a good idea, Chuck."

She shot out of her chair and began pacing around the room. "I could pitch it to her like I should get more involved in the company if I'm going to take it over one day. She'll love that."

Her smile was so sunny, her gratitude so flattering, he almost hated to destroy it.

Almost.

"She _would_ love that. She'd love to have you around all the time, working with her day in, day out. Always by her side. Just an arm's reach away whenever she needed to ask anything or comment on anything."

Blair's smile faltered, her pace slowed.

"And her assistants at the atelier would love to have you there. Someone who really knows Eleanor inside and out. Who can interpret every little squint and twitch, and who's had a lifetime of responding to her criticism. You'd be such a help to them."

She stopped by her desk, her hand on her stomach. "Maybe…"

"Yes?" Chuck prodded.

"Maybe that's not such a good idea after all."

"Why not?"

Blair firmed her chin, a soldier putting on her bravest face. "I have brilliant personal style, of course. But design has never been my strength. And my mother has to put up with all these starlets and models, and it just sounds like such a headache. I don't think I want to work in fashion."

"So that option's out?"

Blair nodded.

The gold pen glided across number two: _Work for Eleanor_.

Which left…

"So what does that leave?" he asked.

Blair shook her head. "I don't know."

She stared into the middle distance. She frowned. One hand absently stroked the top of her desk chair, the other picked at the metallic gold threads of her dress. Her feet fidgeted in their shiny gold shoes, the rounded toes kicking at the edge of the carpet.

She looked utterly lost.

It was time.

Chuck pushed himself off her pillows and stood by the bed, the box safe in the shelter of his pocket. "That leaves me."

He waited. Waited for her to realize what he meant. What he was telling her. What he was asking her.

She frowned at the pastel swirls of the carpet, one hand smoothing the glossy curls of her ponytail. "Leaves you where?" She didn't look up.

He let go of the box. His hand felt useless just sitting in his pocket, so he straightened his bowtie.

"Leaves me with Bass. I can find you a position there."

"Really?" She looked up in surprise and then frustration. "Does that position involve me bending over your desk?"

"Only if you want it to." She pouted at that, and he ran a hand through his hair.

_Stop fucking this up, Bass_.

"That isn't what I'm suggesting, Blair. I promise."

It took her a minute to find her smile. "That's sweet, Chuck. But I don't think it's a good idea. Your board has all the underage executives it can handle at the moment."

"I don't need the board's approval. It's not a salaried position."

Her forehead creased. She shook her head as if to say, _what are you talking about?_ and Chuck wished for a pile of paperwork. He wished for his big teak desk between him and Blair, the light streaming in through the office windows at his back, his phone blinking with messages that needed answering, and a stack of Quarterly Reports demanding his attention. He wished for all the trappings of executive privilege, for American flags flapping over his fucking head and a podium with a microphone and a horde of reporters ravenous for the red meat of his words.

He wished for any—every—reinforcement for his ego other than the little box in his pocket and the pathetic speech stuck in his throat.

He cleared it and took a breath.

"I could use a wife."

Silence.

Or nearly so. Somewhere in the room, a clock ticked. It was probably small and made of silver or porcelain and dainty and antique and delightful, but it marked the seconds with ticks as loud as shotgun blasts and tocks like the boom of fucking cannons. The moments clicked by, echoing in his head, and with every blast and boom, Chuck itched to hunt down that piece-of-shit clock and throw it out the window and watch a taxi drive over it, spilling clock guts all over the road.

Blair sat down abruptly in the desk chair and laughed, her voice hitching at the end.

"Oh fuck you, Chuck."

This was a bad idea. This was a terrible idea. This was the worst idea he'd ever had—worse than that long-ago Gossip Girl blast, worse than calling Bart the night of the Snowflake Ball, worse than almost screwing his former-VP.

But he'd said too much already. He rubbed the back of his neck and dove in.

"My social calendar's gone to shit since you left. The secretaries can't keep track of anything. I don't entertain like I'm supposed to. I can't throw parties at my suite—not the kind of parties the CEO of Bass should throw. Not the kind I can invite the board to. I need someone to figure this out for me, and you're my best bet."

She didn't say anything.

"It's not like you weren't training for this all your life, Blair. You planned to do this with Archibald. Just do it with me instead."

She blinked. And didn't say anything.

He grabbed the box out of his pocket and waved it at her. "There's a ring, if you're worried about that."

"You got a ring?"

"Yeah." He marched over to her and held the box in front of her face. She stared at it, and she looked like she was going to puke or pass out or cry. He shook the box. "Take it."

Her breath caught and her eyes flicked up to meet his, and then she took the box in both hands and slowly lowered them to her lap.

"You can open the box, Blair. Nothing's going to jump out of it."

The hinge creaked and the latch snicked as her thumbnail popped it open, and he couldn't watch. He had to turn away, to stare at her bedspread and her windows and the dark and bright night of the city.

"Oh my God!"

He pictured what she saw. The Ascher-cut diamond would fracture the light of her desk lamp and send it back to her in rainbowed fragments. The platinum would glow cool and quiet against the white lining of the box and the gold lettering inside the cover. If she ever put it on her finger, the four-carat solitaire would shine against her skin, big enough to tell the world _I'm Blair Waldorf_ in the way she deserved, but simple enough show that _she_ wore the ring, the ring didn't wear her.

Not that he'd thought about it or anything.

"Oh my God," she breathed again. "When did you get this?"

"This morning. Before brunch."

"It's Thanksgiving. Cartier's isn't open."

"They were for me."

"Chuck…"

He turned at that, braced himself for her no.

"I—" She licked her lips. "Can I try it on?"

"It's yours. Do whatever you want with it."

She pulled the ring from the box with delicate fingers, and snapped the box closed, placing it on the vanity next to her brush. And then she slid her finger into the cool loop of metal.

"It's so beautiful," she gasped. And it was, like he knew it would be. She stared into the diamond's glittering facets with rapt, almost euphoric attention. She smirked.

"Chuck Bass, _this_ would have been a good opener." She raised her hand to him and pointed to the ring.

For the first time in what seemed like decades, he felt the urge to smirk himself. "Does this mean…"

"It doesn't mean anything," She interrupted. "I don't know what it means. Don't ask me. I don't know what to think."

The little clock chimed six times. A much friendlier little clock than it had seemed before.

"Shit." Blair dropped her hand to her lap. "We have to go down for cocktails." She grabbed the ring box and sighed. "I don't want to take it off."

"Then don't."

"I have to. I can't waltz into my mother's dining room wearing"—she glanced down at her hand—"four carats on my ring finger and not expect her to notice."

"Good eye."

"Thank you." Closing her eyes, she pulled the ring from her finger with one quick tug. "My hand is so lonely now," she sighed. "Can I…?"

"Yes?" Chuck encouraged.

"Can I keep it in my pocket?" Blair touched the faint diagonal lines of fabric at her hips. "I won't lose it, I swear."

"I'm not worried about that, Blair."

"I just—" she stood, slipping the ring into the nearly invisible pocket at her hip. "I'll feel better if I can keep it close to me. Then I can look at my mother and think, _I have four carats in my pocket right now, Eleanor, and you have no idea_."

Chuck smiled. "Whatever works."

She smiled back. "Okay." She breathed, chest rising and falling, and headed for the door.

"Blair." He stopped her with a hand on her elbow as she passed. She turned to face him, brown eyes curious, maybe a little wary.

He had no clue where this impulse ranked on the bad-idea scale. Probably at _Catastrophic_, but quite frankly, he didn't care anymore.

"Fuck it." He grabbed her by the shoulders, pulling her closer and kissing her.

She felt like…_Blair_. She smelled like…_Blair_. She tasted like…_Blair_. The only word he had for everything desirable and wonderful and worth the fighting and failing.

_Blair_. _Blair_. _Blair_.

His hand tightened on her shoulders as his mouth moved to her neck and her head fell back. He pressed his fingers into her flesh, wishing he could pin her in place, fix her right here with kisses and diamonds and the blood pumping through his body.

His lips found the place where her pulse beat beneath her jaw. "I still love you," he breathed against her skin.

She stiffened under his touch. She raised her arms between them and pushed, stepping out of his reach. Her eyes watered. "Another good opener, Bass," she managed through quivering lips. "You should really write these down."

She gritted her teeth and blinked the tears back, tilting her head toward the door. "Come on."

He followed the gold beacon of her back into the hallway, his hand in his empty pocket. He'd offered her his company, and his diamond, and his… he cleared his throat, clenching his fist.

He had nothing left but his table manners, and not even an etiquette freak like Blair Waldorf would find the way he held a fish fork enticing.

At the head of the stairs she stopped. She set her shoulders and turned, whirling past him down the hall, grabbing his hand and dragging him behind her, pulling him out of sight of the foyer.

"I still love you, too, you jerk," she spat out when they'd stopped. Her fist punched his shoulder, and as he recoiled from the blow, she launched herself against him, arms wrapping around his neck, body pressed tits-to-chest against his.

Mouth on mouth, he bit her lip, felt her tongue graze his own. He pulled her closer, with a hand cradling her neck and a hand cupping her ass. Closer—Jesus, as close as they could get—and he felt her arms doing the same, pulling his head down, as if he needed any encouragement to taste her lips or feel her body. As if he ever did.

She stepped back at last, and her face was flushed and her hair mussed, and neither of them knew quite what to say. So they didn't say anything. And she took his hand and led him down the hall to the staircase and her mother's Thanksgiving dinner.


	5. Chapter 5

Sermons and Soda-Water

Chapter 5

_And whispering 'I will ne'er consent'—consented._

--Lord Byron—_Don Juan_, Canto I

* * *

With every step, the ring in her pocket pressed against her thigh, diamond facets sharp reminders of the man walking behind her. With every step, his backlit shadow crossed with hers, twin patches of darkness racing toward the floor. With every step, their joined hands shifted—his rose, hers fell, and the fingers hooked at the knuckles.

As she reached the bottom of the staircase, Daddy strolled across the foyer with a silver platter and three Baccarat glasses filled with sparkling gold wine. She dropped Chuck's hand.

"Blair-bear, there you are. And Charles, lovely to see you, as always. Champagne to give proper thanks."

"Thank you, Daddy."

The champagne hit her lips in a cool, bright burst and tingled against her tongue. She didn't need it. Her blood felt bubbly enough. It popped and whizzed as it ran through her veins, flushing her cheeks, sparking her nerves.

Chuck's hand settled at her back.

"Mr. Waldorf, I appreciate your inviting me to share your Thanksgiving."

Daddy saluted Chuck with a tip of his champagne flute. "Of course, Charles, but you mustn't thank me. I'm not the host here. Just a devoted dad eager to spend a few days with his little girl."

Chuck's fingers played idly with the fabric against Blair's spine, tracing delicate swirls against the jacquard. Blair stepped out of his reach and linked her arm through her father's, smiling up at him.

Chuck dropped his hand to his side. "I'll be sure to thank Mr. Rose for his hospitality as well, naturally."

Blair saw his fingers flex and fist, and goose bumps galloped across her lower back, retracing the lines where his hand had been. She sipped her champagne to hide the shiver that threatened to brand itself across her bare shoulders. "Daddy, we'll have to call Roman later and tell him we miss him."

"I already spoke to him, Blair-bear. He sends all his love." He turned to Chuck. "He's in Provence on a shoot. Couldn't be rescheduled. But we'll all be together for Christmas."

Blair giggled and smiled at her father, the champagne—certainly, the champagne—making her giddy. "Christmas in Paris. It's so beautiful."

"I look forward to seeing it," Chuck answered, as if her words had anything to do with him. Which they didn't. At all.

Her father apparently failed to see Chuck's irritatingly self-satisfied smirk and took his ridiculous statement seriously. "Planning a trip to Paris, Charles?"

Chuck's dark eyes scanned her face, settling on her mouth. She saw them follow the curves of her lips as she raised her glass. She hid her nose in her champagne flute, the Dom blocking him from sight.

"That really depends on Blair."

Blair gulped and then swallowed her wine. The flute's cut-crystal stem dug into her palm as she wiped a few stray drops from her lips and conjured up a nonchalant smile.

"Don't let me stop you, Chuck." She offered him a breezy flourish of her empty glass. "You should go. I'll e-mail you a few tips on what to see while you're there. And maybe we can have dinner together one night if we're both in town."

"I was hoping for more hands-on guidance."

"I'm sure your travel agent will be only too happy to provide it."

"You know Paris five times better than any travel agent could," Daddy said, patting her hand, and pulling it free from the circle of his arm. "Chuck can't do without your assistance."

Blair sent Chuck a silent warning: _Not now. Do not play these games in front of my father._

"I never could," Chuck murmured, ignoring her dagger eyes.

If her father heard Chuck's words and—really—rather inappropriately impassioned tone, he didn't give a sign beyond his customary avuncular expression.

For Blair, however, muddling through this confusing, confounding, wonderful (no, not wonderful, she didn't just think that) hour, they nudged her a little closer to the complete collapse she could see coming: the point when she either sank into Chuck's arms like a third-rate heroine in some chest-baring supermarket romance or snapped his head off, praying-mantis style, in glorious public retaliation for every bit of alpha-male bullshit he'd pulled over the past five lifetimes.

Because, honestly, an out-of-the-blue proposal of marriage did not give the man the right to undress her with his eyes and caress her with his words with her father standing right next to them, spectacular ring or not.

It was time to take control.

"Daddy, Chuck and I are going to take these empty glasses into the kitchen." She grabbed her father's, holding both flutes in her right hand by their crossed stems, and reached for Chuck's. It was still full. He hadn't even taken a sip.

She pulled back and took the silver platter from her father instead. "Coming, Chuck?"

"In a minute, Blair," Chuck answered smoothly. "Mr. Waldorf, I was hoping we could speak privately first about a matter of some delicacy."

Blair froze on her way to the sitting room. Chuck wanted to talk to her father.

_Chuck Wanted to Talk to Her Father._

Setting the platter and flutes on an ottoman without a thought for their safety, Blair whirled around, taking in Chuck's military-stiff posture and her father's appraising—but not dismissive—expression.

"Chuck, you have to come with me now. My mother needs you in the kitchen."

Blair's father turned his curious glance on her, examining her as though seeing her for the first time. "I'm sure Eleanor has everything well in hand, Blair. She can spare Chuck for a few minutes. And I'm most interested to hear what he has to say."

"No, Daddy, it's not important. I'm sure of it He wants to give you a lecture about something stupid, like cufflinks. Don't listen to him. You'll regret it. He's very dull."

"Your champagne flutes are on the floor." Chuck pointed behind her, and she turned to see that the flutes—unbroken, fortunately—had rolled off the ottoman. She bent to retrieve them, and when she turned back, Chuck and her father were walking together in the direction of Cyrus's study.

"Chuck Bass, you come back here right now!"

He stopped, pivoted, and faced her, the image of elegant unconcern with his perfect bow tie and jacket and his shiny shoes and his arms slightly spread in questioning anticipation.

Blair frowned. "We have candles to light. Lots and lots of candles. My mother wants it done right now."

"And I'll help you. As soon as I'm finished speaking with your father."

"Chuck," she called after him, but it came out a hoarse whisper, and neither he nor her father turned around again. They disappeared down the corridor, their dress shoes knocking with hollow warmth as they moved from marble to wood floors.

Blair stifled a growl of frustration. Chuck had no right to speak with her father about…whatever it was that had…_happened_ between them upstairs. Not until she figured out what she meant to do it about it, at least.

Gathering up the tray and glasses, Blair shook her head a little, correcting her wayward thoughts. She knew exactly what she was going to do. She was going to refuse this ridiculous—not even a proposal, this ridiculous _proposition_, and she was going to move on with her life and do something stunning and spectacular with her life that would make her the envy of every woman in New York. Because she was twenty-two years old, and no way was she tying herself to an unreliable, unpredictable, undependable anti-husband like Chuck Bass.

Her little mantra echoed in her head—_no way in hell, no way in hell_—as she carried the flutes and tray to the kitchen, pushing the swinging door open with her shoulder. Her mother's typical army of cater-waiters flocked around the kitchen island doing something finicky with sheets of puff pastry. Dorota stood by the table, arranging little marzipan apples and pears inside a giant marzipan cornucopia on a cake stand.

"Dorota! Put this stuff in the sink! I need to help my mother with her candles."

Dorota flinched, dropping a bunch of marzipan grapes on the floor, and trotted across the kitchen to Blair. She reached for the flutes and tray, halting as she took hold of them, her attention caught by something else. Something on Blair's face.

"What is the matter, Dorota? Have you forgotten where the sink is?"

"No, Miss Blair. It's just…you have cut on face."

Blair's hands flew to her cheeks, stroking up toward her hairline.

"No, Miss Blair. There. On lip."

A little patch of dried blood soiled Blair's lower lip. Her tongue found it tangy and rusty; her fingers found it flaky and hard.

Blair's hands shook a little as she lowered them.

"That cornucopia needs more pumpkins, Dorota. It's autumn, you know."

Dorota's _Yes, Miss Blair_ followed Blair to the powder room. She flicked on the light and flipped the door lock, then rested her palms against the cool of the black marble sink top, staring into the oval mirror. A spot of dark red stained the plumpest part of her lip. She turned on the water and grabbed a hand towel, wetting one of the corners.

As she dabbed at the cut, an image filled the mirror. Chuck's teeth pulling on her lip, drawing blood, his tongue lapping it before the drops could fall. Her hands in his hair and on his neck and fisted in his shirt.

She dropped the towel in the sink and hung her head as champagne bubbles and soft hot wax ran down her legs and arms and neck, and pooled by her breasts and lower. She was just sexually frustrated, that was all. It had been a long time.

Though it hadn't, really. There was that Stern student five months ago, who'd taken her back to his place in Murray Hill. And that banker from the Met Apollo Circle event three months after that. And plenty of other fleeting encounters that stopped short of sex but got the job done and left her plenty satisfied, thank you very much.

Except they clearly didn't. Because looking at that little spot of blood on her lip, all she could remember was the last time she'd been honest-to-goodness, really-and-truly, wall-smacking, headboard-banging, sheets-tearing fucked, and it hadn't been with any grad student or Met benefactor. It was with the guy who'd just, for whatever twisted reason of his own, asked her to be his wife.

She groaned and closed her eyes, listened to the water run, and wished that she could turn off the light and hear the door open behind her and feel him press against her, hard and straight and insistent against her leg.

_And he'd put a hand over her mouth to stifle her cries, and he'd pull her skirt up to her waist and yank her thong down to her knees. She'd hear his fly unzip and his belt unbuckle, and she'd feel him press into her, slide into her, pushing her against the sink, and he'd—_

Someone knocked on the door, sharp, quick, irritated.

"Blair, what are you doing in there? I need those candles lit."

Count on Eleanor to interrupt just when things were getting good.

Blair splashed some water on her face and opened the door. "Of course, Mom. I was just about to."

Grabbing the candle lighter, Blair walked past her mother and into the dining room. The double table was set for twenty. In a corner, a violinist and a cellist unpacked their instruments from their cases and positioned their chairs.

Blair's mother followed her. "You've got some blood on your lip. What is that?"

The first of the fat, white pillar candles in the center of the table flared to life. "I bit myself eating something. I was so hungry."

"I hope you didn't stuff yourself before dinner. Cyrus is very proud of this year's turkey."

"I'll eat just as much as you want me to, Mother. Don't worry."

The lighter flickered, and Blair started on the candelabra in the center of the table, lighting each fresh white taper. Her mother hovered behind her, dimming the lights as the room filled with candle glow and studying Blair as she moved around the table.

Blair let her hand brush against the skirt of her dress, feeling the four-carat bump.

"I'll leave you to it, then." Eleanor walked to the door. "Don't forget the ones in the sitting room fireplace."

Blair flicked on the lighter's safety and set it on the windowsill. The musicians experimented with a chord while dancing candlelight painted the walls and slow rivers of wax slid down the sides of the lit tapers. The bone china took on a pearlescent sheen and the solid silver acquired a watery shimmer. Blair sat in her usual seat, right in the middle of the table by the open entry to the foyer, and let the calming influence of light and wealth and beauty wash over her.

The pillar in front of her flared in a breeze from the swinging kitchen door, picking out the delicate calligraphy on the place card to Blair's right. Blair took a closer look at the distinctive loops and points of the name.

_Aaron Rose_.

She glanced at the card to her left.

_Miriam Goldfine_.

Blair was stuck between her hipster douchebag stepbrother and Cyrus's cranky old sister?

She got up and wandered around the table, examining the cards above every plate. Daddy sat on the other side of the table, to the right of Cyrus at the head. Her mother was at the other head. And Chuck had been placed between the kitchen door and Cyrus's mother!

Oh no. Eleanor Rose was _not_ going to get one over on Blair Waldorf like that.

Sweeping Aaron's card up, she rounded the table and switched it with Chuck's. As she walked back to her seat, her mother returned from the kitchen.

"Blair, you haven't done the sitting room candles yet."

"I needed to rearrange something in here first."

"What do you have?" Her mother observed the small rectangular in Blair's hand, then noticed Aaron's card in front of her. "I sincerely hope that is not Chuck Bass's place card."

"He's my guest and he's sitting next to me. Not next to some crazy 95 year old who still thinks it's the Depression."

Eleanor stalked toward her daughter, one hand at her hip, the other held out for the card. "Blair, you know the rules of this house. Couples do not sit beside each other at dinner parties."

"Fortunately, Chuck and I aren't a couple." Blair whisked the card behind her back, out of her mother's reach.

"You give me that card right now."

"No. I invited Chuck to catch up with him, and that's what we're going to do."

Her mother lunged behind Blair's back, but Blair sidestepped and scooted away from her.

"It seems to me, young lady, that you had plenty of catching-up time in your room earlier."

"Well we haven't seen each other in a long time, so there's a lot to catch up on."

Just as Blair tossed her ponytail over her shoulder, Eleanor executed a surprisingly agile pivot and pinned Blair's arm behind her back, grabbing the card. Blair spun around in place, refusing to let go.

The women's eyes met in identical frowns over the little piece of paper. "Let go of the card, Blair."

"You let go."

A bell rang in the distance and the murmur of indistinct voices grew louder. The musicians ran bows over strings, filling the room with the sunny notes of Vivaldi. A cater-waiter walked in from the foyer, ringing a little silver bell, and a host of Roses and Waldorfs and assorted others followed behind.

Neither Blair nor her mother spared them a glance. They both tightened their grip on the card.

"Blair? What's going on?" Chuck's hand rested against Blair's lower back. She smiled, sweet triumph within her grasp, and glanced at him over her shoulder.

"My mother and I were admiring the card she had made for you." She dropped the card and pointed to the empty place beside her. "And look. You're sitting right next to me."

Blair had never seen her mother have a tantrum in her life, and she didn't see one now. But that subtle twist of her lips in acknowledgement of Blair's victory was just as sweet.

"Yes, you're sitting right here." She flicked the card toward Chuck's place. It landed on his china charger.

As Chuck pulled out Blair's chair for her, Daddy and Cyrus walked into the room, laughing together. Daddy clapped Chuck on the shoulder as he walked past, and Chuck nodded in response.

"What was that all about?" Chuck whispered, settling into his own seat.

"I could ask you the same question," Blair whispered back. "Since when are you and my father such good friends?"

Chuck smirked and unfolded his napkin, refusing to answer as a cater-waiter ladled butternut squash soup from a giant tureen.

Despite Blair's claim to her mother, they didn't say much to each other throughout the first two courses. Blair politely asked Miriam about her grandchildren in Ohio and Chuck spoke with Blair's Uncle Tommy about the real estate business. Occasionally, his foot met hers under the table or perhaps pressed against her leg a moment longer than necessary. Occasionally, her hand rested on the bump in her pocket, fingers following the sharp lines of the diamond.

The cater-waiters cleared the salad course and Dorota carried in the giant turkey for Cyrus to carve and Blair started to think she might survive this dinner after all.

When would she ever learn to stop tempting fate?

"White meat for our future lawyer," Cyrus gushed, heaping her favorite bits of turkey breast on the plate meant for her.

"Blair, have you thought about NYU Law?" her father asked. "I know you've got your heart set on Yale, but you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Some very fine legal minds teach there."

"You should know, Miriam," Cyrus later called out to his sister, who spooned mashed potatoes and creamed spinach onto her plate, "You should know that our Blair is in the running for valedictorian at NYU."

Blair set down her fork, white meat and sweet potatoes and cranberry relish about as appetizing as a scoop of dung. "You shouldn't tell people that, Cyrus. It's a very competitive year. I don't stand a chance."

"Nonsense! You're doing brilliantly there. We're all so proud of you."

Blair's stomach twisted. She wanted to excuse herself from the table. She wanted to run up to her private bathroom and feel the cool white tile on her face.

Chuck put his hand on her arm. She met his eyes.

"I'm proud too, Blair."

Blair nodded at him, took a breath, folded her hands in her lap, knuckles white and fingers twisted.

"Mom, Dad, Cyrus. I have something to tell you."

The clattering of forks and knives filled her ears.

"I think it will surprise you. But it's good news. Or it can be."

She heard the crunching of carrots, the tearing of turkey wings, the slurping of gravy.

"I'm not going back to NYU. I'm leaving school, because…"

Her voice faded away. The room faded away, except four pairs of eyes fixed on her face. The sounds faded away, all except her own breathing.

_In. Out. In. Out._

"Because…"

Chuck's hand found hers under the table cloth. He interlaced their fingers and stroked her palm with his thumb.

She reached into her pocket and fumbled for the ring.

"Because Chuck and I are getting married!"

Forks fell. Glasses tipped. Violin strings snapped. And Chuck's hand pressed against hers, under the cover of the table.


End file.
